The Best Bank Stocks

Analyst Matt Olney has a track record of picking winners for Barron's; here are his nine best values in the banking sector.

It's not an easy time to be a regional bank. Interest rates are low, competition on pricing is high, and margins are squeezed on both ends. In a slow-growth economy, there's little easily won organic growth.

But that doesn't mean that investors should shy away from the sector, says Matt Olney, an analyst at Stephens Inc., a boutique investment bank in Little Rock, Ark. Olney, who has covered banks and thrifts for nearly a decade, says that while regional banks as a whole have seen impressive stock growth in the past year,...